How to be less possessive in a relationship

Mar 12, WRT a person, it comes into existence because you don't want to share the kind of relationship you have with that person with anyone else. You want your bond. How do you stop being possessive when in a relationship? Here are some tips to help you. This behavior can be due to a variety of factors, including jealousy. You can stop being possessive by improving your life in areas outside the relationship as well as dealing with the underlying insecurity and jealousy.

There are many subtle and not-so-subtle ways people attempt to control relationship partners as a means to calm their own emotions. In fact, attempts to exercise power over our partners actually serve to reduce and diminish our own attraction to them.

When we try to control someone close to us, we limit them in ways that make them less themselves.

How To Stop Being A Possessive Boyfriend

We want our partners and ourselves for that matter to be fulfilled, well-rounded individuals who are fully alive. When we make our partner feel guilty for choosing to spend time with friends, for example, we actually shrink their world. Otherwise, we take the air and life out of the relationship. So how can you stop the possessive patterns in your relationship? The first step is to understand why you engage in controlling behavior, and the second step is to deal with the underlying feelings that drive you toward an unequal dynamic.

Most of us have some degree of fear and insecurity surrounding our close relationships. These feelings can spring from deeper struggles we have with trust, low self-esteem, fears of rejection, loss or intimacy itself.

These deep-seated emotions can lead to a desire to control.

Instead of exploring where these feelings come from, we tend to project them onto our partner and start acting out controlling behaviors that we hope will alleviate these painful feelings. For example, we may on some core level feel unlovable or like no one would ever choose us.

This negative self-concept can lead us to act out all kinds of jealous or insecure behaviors with our partner. We may act victimized and wounded by any comment or action that we can construe as disregarding or rejecting. All of these behavior patterns have a lot more to do with us than our partner.

And most of them have deep roots in our past. As children, we developed strategies or defenses in an effort to protect ourselves from difficult or painful conditions.

These early experiences shaped our expectations about relationships and the defenses we formed then still play out in our lives today. That is why making sense of our own past and exploring our early attachment patterns can be very helpful in understanding our feelings of possessiveness as adults. As adults, we may project these feelings onto our partner, feeling like we need to make things happen, remind them to notice us, etc. We may have a lot of anxiety about their movement, fearing rejection or abandonment.

As a result, we relive the past, clinging or making efforts to control our partner, so we can feel secure. Unfortunately, because these feelings are rooted in our history, we rarely, if ever, get the reassurance we seek from acting out our old defenses in the present. Instead, we repeat patterns from our childhood, acting on our insecurities, and often pushing our partner further away in the process. The patterns and defenses we form growing up may have been adaptive to our childhood, but they can hurt our current relationships.

However, there are real steps we can take to break patterns of defensiveness and achieve an equal and trusting relationship. Enhance our sense of self — If insecurity is at the root of our possessive behavior, we have to start to look at ways to bring more self-compassion into our lives.

I had to do this after my second serious relationship ended. It brought up all sorts of insecurities, which I spent about a year addressing. It turns out I had suppressed some painful childhood memories and these were affecting my wellbeing. After discovering them, processing them and discussing the issues with my parents I was able to move on. I was a stronger person and ready for a new relationship. I just needed to shine a light on a splinter I didn't know I had.

Don't Be Needy Everyone needs space at times. Time to be alone or time to hang out with other people. Don't demand all of your girlfriend's time. When she needs space it isn't a reflection on you or a sign she is unhappy with you. It's just what normal people need from time to time. So instead of letting that get to you, you should encourage it. A happier individual makes for a happier relationship.

Don't Be Jealous Insecurity is an internal state of mind where you have low confidence and low self worth.

Jealousy is where you desire something that someone else has. Possessiveness is when you refuse to let something that you have go. In a relationship jealousy and possessiveness are similar but there is a key difference. Imagine you are at a party and you see another guy hit on your girl. It makes you sick to the stomach. That is jealousy, because in your mind your girl has already decided to leave you and hook up with him. You perceive her as being not with you, but with him and so you want something that he has.

It is this fear that causes you to be possessive. You are so afraid of her leaving that when she is innocently talking to another guy this makes you assume she has decided to ditch you for him. Your irrational logic makes you hold on tight and control her behavior because you hope to avoid a situation her talking to other men that might give rise to jealous feelings.

The answer to this is to learn to overcome the jealous feelings.

How To Stop Being A Possessive Boyfriend

Allow your girl to lead her own life freely, including being out in the big wide world outside your influence and control. Don't see this as a challenge, a threat or a loss. If you can get comfortable with not knowing where she is or who she is with and actually trust her, it will remove the need to be possessive. Instead of feeling like she is always looking for any excuse to ditch you, you will know that you can let her go and she will come back. Learn How To Trust Think of trust as a muscle.

It will be weak if you don't exercise it and it will become stronger if you do. You can't learn how to trust unless you actually do it. Experience the feeling of letting go and of nothing bad happening.

Not being in control will perhaps be uncomfortable. But that's the point.

Trust puts you in a vulnerable position where you don't know what is going on. The aim isn't to remove the uncertainty. Rather it is to learn to live with it.

The theory being that if you don't find anything untoward then you can relax. But it never makes you relax does it? It gives a temporary hit of relief before the anxious waves start flooding back again.

Spying is like a drug and you are an addict. If you do this you need to quit and go cold turkey. You can't truly trust someone if you have to check up on them.

Be Mine: Dealing with Possessiveness in a Relationship - PsychAlive

In the Cold War, President Reagan used to say "trust but verify. You girlfriend is not your enemy so you need to learn to trust without verification. Get over that addiction. Have An Open Conversation About Your Possessive Behavior No doubt if you have been possessive and controlling your girlfriend has felt it and thought about it. She has probably talked about it to her friends, or her mother or someone else because she feels she can't talk to you.

If you are truly committed to getting this under control then you should have a good long conversation about it with her. This isn't so you can tell her how her legitimate behavior makes you feel possessive and jealous and ask her to stop. It's not for you to justify yourself. It's so she can tell you how your behavior makes her feel and so you can figure a way to work through it together.

Life Advice : How to Overcome Jealousy & Possessiveness

If she is willing to support you it will be good for you to have her as an accountability buddy. Try really really hard to push that palm tree out of your mind.